DA: Man admitted killing SF security guard who was on FaceTime with wife

Rolando Romero, 61, was shot dead on July 2, 2018 while working as a security guard in San Francisco’s Bayview.

Rolando Romero, 61, was shot dead on July 2, 2018 while working as a security guard in San Francisco’s Bayview.

Photo: Family Of Rolando Romero

Photo: Family Of Rolando Romero

Image
1of/29

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 29

Rolando Romero, 61, was shot dead on July 2, 2018 while working as a security guard in San Francisco’s Bayview.

Rolando Romero, 61, was shot dead on July 2, 2018 while working as a security guard in San Francisco’s Bayview.

Photo: Family Of Rolando Romero

DA: Man admitted killing SF security guard who was on FaceTime with wife

1 / 29

Back to Gallery

Rolando Romero was sitting on a bench, video chatting with his wife back in the Philippines when he was shot dead one hour before getting off work as a security guard at a public housing development in San Francisco’s Bayview.

Prosecutors released the disturbing details in the seemingly random killing of Romero, 61, during a court hearing Tuesday that was overflowing with family members of the victim and defendant.

The accused killer, 24-year-old Cardell Mason Coleman Jr., pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in a case that has drawn outrage from the community and law enforcement alike.

Coleman is accused of shooting Romero at the Alice Griffith Housing Development at Arelious Walker Drive and Fitzgerald Avenue in the early morning hours of July 2. The building is one of several new apartment complexes replacing the aging and dilapidated Double Rock development.

ALSO

“It’s devastating to me as a parent, as a single father, and I raised him right,” Coleman’s father, Cardell Coleman Sr., said outside court. “He was not in his state of mind. I don’t know. I don’t know whether he did it or not.”

The defendant had been staying at the complex on the 2700 block of Arelious Walker Drive with his father the night before the killing, Coleman Sr. said.

Around 5 a.m. the next morning, the defendant propped open a locked door on Fitzgerald Street and left the building through the garage, Assistant District Attorney Heather Trevisan wrote in court records.

Romero was speaking with his wife over FaceTime, sitting on a bench directly across from the door Coleman Jr. had propped open, when for unknown reasons the gunman approached Romero and shot him twice with a .38-caliber revolver, prosecutors said.

The killer then ran through the propped door and ditched the gun in a backpack in the stairwell, Trevisan said.

Police arrested Coleman Jr. at his father’s apartment around 1 a.m. the next morning. Prosecutors said the son “provided a statement where he admits to the killing and disposal of the firearm.” The killing was also captured on security video, officials said.

Coleman Sr. said he was working on finding housing for his son, who was unemployed.

Other than minor brushes with the law, the father said, Coleman Jr. hadn’t been in major trouble.

“Nothing at all like this — just kid stuff,” he said.

Court records show that Coleman Jr. was previously arrested on suspicion of grand theft and other misdemeanors, but he does not have a history of felony convictions and was not on parole or probation when the crime occurred.

Romero’s killing has been particularly troubling to police officers who work with the community in the Bayview neighborhood.

“It’s very tough watching this happen to this family,” said Sgt. Tracy McCray, who is part of a housing unit that patrols the Alice Griffith complex. “No one deserves to die like this.”

The San Francisco Police Officers Association has donated $1,000 to a crowdfunding campaign raising money to bring Romero’s body back to the Philippines, McCray said.

“This is one of the more heinous acts of violence against someone,” she said. “It wasn’t expected. There was no pre-warning. Nothing. All of a sudden, he lost his life just doing his job.”